Mexico’s miserable World Cup history is not its fate

In an article titled, “A Year to Forget: 1994 Leaves Mexico Reeling,” the author, Anthony DePalma, wrote about the never-ending misfortunes that befell the country that year. He mentioned “the worst drought in a decade ... [which] cost the lives of 44 Tarahumara Indians in the northern state of Chihuahua,” and how “a banker who was identified by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari as one of Mexico’s most dynamic businessmen became a fugitive when regulators accused him of illegally lending himself $700 million from his bank’s vaults.”

DePalma also included the Mexican national team:

“Mexico’s national soccer team lost its World Cup berth on penalty kicks, and Julio Cesar Chavez, the boxer, lost his first match in 14 years. Even when there was good news like the victory of the Mexican runner German Silva in the New York City Marathon, it came with a twist. Mr. Silva took a wrong turn near the race’s end and had to be pointed in the right direction.”

Mexico tied Bulgaria, 1-1, in regulation and then lost, 3-1, on penalties in the Round of 16 of the World Cup that July 5.

At the end of the article, Sister Maria, a nun, was asked why the year was so particular awful. She dismissed the notion. “There is no such thing as a horrible year, not here, not anywhere ... It’s only that men sometimes think of it that way.”

Sister Maria might have been right that there’s no such thing as a bad year. We tend to have a recency bias when it comes to experiences. The most immediate things that we deal with seem to feel like the most extreme. It wasn’t that long ago that many people in the United States declared that 2016 was the worst year of record, only to correct themselves as 2017 and 2018 brought even more stress and unhappiness.

There’s also the idea that all years are bad, because the passage of time naturally brings the end of things. Every year will have its own share of misfortunes and endings, and the bad events always seem to outweigh the little good that we get. In response that 2013 was also the worst year of all time, Teju Cole wrote that:

“All years are terrible years; the predicament of being human tends towards the negative. We read the news and are left feeling nothing more noble than ‘only I have escaped to tell thee.’ A given year can be pronounced good only in a solipsistic sense.”

But there must have been something about 1994, at least for the Mexican national team. The year itself might not have been the worst, but it was the start of one of the most miserable stretches in international soccer. Mexico has qualified for every World Cup tournament since 1994, and in every single one, they have been eliminated in the Round of 16. The story hasn’t changed for 24 years.

The world in those years has changed. It is almost unrecognizable from what it was back in 1994. Generations of players have come and gone from the national team. Carlos Vela, Javier Hernández, Andrés Guardado, Giovani Dos Santos, have all gone from mere children to professional players, to seasoned veterans of El Tri in the time in that time span, and all they’ve known is Mexico losing in the Round of 16.

Mexico started off the 2018 World Cup in the best of ways, by beating Germany, the defending champions, 1-0. It wasn’t just the scoreline but the way that Mexico played, dominating Germany for long stretches of the match, rattling them, that gave birth to the hope that this team was special. But just as people tend to feel that each bad year is the worst, it seems that hope works in the same way. Each team that starts off well feels like it’s the team destined to do what others failed.

By Mexico’s next match, that hope became shaky optimism. They beat South Korea, 2-1, with South Korea nearly equalizing in the last few minutes of the match. In the last match of the group stages, whatever hope that was left from beating Germany was shattered, as Mexico were beaten soundly, losing 0-3 to a Swedish team that barely beat South Korea and lost to a 10-men German team. Mexico made it to the knockout stages, but there was little to celebrate. (Though Mexico did celebrate).

Against Brazil, Mexico started well. It looked as if they found the same energy and confidence they had against Germany on the first day. In the first half, Vela and Lozano created opportunities at will, and the team’s pressure had Brazil reeling and dropping deeper out of fear. Yet, Mexico couldn’t take advantage of their dominance to score. When they got into the final third, attacks dissipated. As the game went into the second half and their pressure eased up, Brazil began to come into the game, and hope was replaced by the horror and disappointment that this team’s adventure would come to the same conclusions as the ones before it.

Sure enough, Neymar scored in the 51st minute, and then Roberto Firmino finished off a counterattack in the 88th to consign this Mexican team to the same list as the last six Mexican teams who have all lost at the Round of 16.

A day before Mexico’s loss to Brazil, Cuauhtémoc Blanco was named the winner of the elections for governor of the state of Morelos. Blanco made his debut as a professional player in 1992 and scored his first professional goal the September following Mexico’s loss to Bulgaria. He made his debut on Feb. 1, 1995.

For much of the last two decades, Blanco was the center of El Tri. He led them to their biggest achievement on the international stage with the 1999 Confederations Cup 4-3 victory against Brazil, against whom he created two goals and scored one. He retired in 2015 as the only Mexican player to score in three World Cups, and as the second highest goal-scorer for the team of all time.

Blanco entered into politics after retirement and has risen from the mayor of Cuernavaca, the capital city of Morelos, to the state’s governor, in three years.

In the time that it’s taken for Blanco to score his first goal, debut for the national team, become the star and leader of the team, then a veteran and legend, and finally to move on from soccer into politics, Mexico still has not passed the Round of 16 at the World Cup.

The world is so different than it was in 1994. We now have broadband internet, virtual reality, we’ve discovered gravitational waves and the Higgs Boson particle. Time has moved forward and everything is different. Yet, one thing in this world has remained constant for more than two decades now. When Mexico gets to the Round of 16 at the World Cup, they lose.

Yet, it’s impossible not to hope. Mexico lost to Brazil, but they played well enough that it’s easy to convince oneself that their failure was due to bad luck. If they had taken any of their early chances, things would have been different. It’s this possibility of another reality that helps to deal with bad years — and in this case, a bad history.

Things change in this world in two ways, by nature because time passes, and because we as people will it so, as agents of change ourselves. There is no natural law that says that Mexico has to lose every time in the Round of 16, we know this. Just like a bad year only feels like the worst because it’s the most recent. There was a history before 1994 where Mexico went beyond the Round of 16, and there will be a history afterwards. The only constant thing in this world is that things change, so this will as well.